The present invention generally relates to apparatus and methods for fabricating food items, and particularly to apparatus and methods for fabricating food items including food of a desired embossed shape supported on support material.
The sale of snack-type food products is a highly competitive business. In addition to the particular food components, increasingly the novelty and play value of the product are important in the marketability of any particular food item. For example, fruit-based snack products such as FRUIT ROLL-UPS(trademark) and FRUIT-BY-THE-FOOT(trademark) fruit products have found wide market acceptance.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide novel apparatus and methods for the fabrication of food items, which in the preferred form are in the form of a continuous string of food supported upon a relatively rigid strip of support material in a non-intersecting arrangement.
Another object of the invention is to provide apparatus and methods where the food is compressed as strings on the support material without a thin layer of food being present on the support material and between the desired shape of food.
Surprisingly, the above objectives can be satisfied in the field of food fabrication by providing, in the preferred form, apparatus and methods of food fabrication where a strip of support material and food are simultaneously fed between an anvil surface and a continuous forming surface of a first abutment nip to compress the food into a groove in the desired food shape and onto the support material and then passing the support material between a second abutment nip having a corresponding groove in its continuous forming surface and in phase with the food compressed on the continuous strip of support material.
In preferred aspects of the present invention, the first and second abutment nips are formed by first and second forming rollers rotatably abutting different portions of the periphery of an anvil roller.
In other aspects of the present invention, the phase of the continuous strip of support material and the food compressed thereon can be adjusted by changing the spacing of an idler roller which strips the continuous strip of support material and the food compressed thereon from the first forming roller.
In still other aspects of the present invention, a ribbon of film material is utilized to remove the compressed food from the grooves of the forming roller, with the ribbon of film material located intermediate the food and the forming rollers.
The present invention will become clearer in light of the following detailed description of an illustrative embodiment of this invention described in connection with the drawings.